Agriculture in Ocean

3/4 th of our earth is composed of Water. We are finding difficult to get the required amount of water for irrigation. It is approximated that to produce 1 Kg of Rice requires 400 - 500 litres of water is required. A floating Island powered by Green Energy like Solar, Wind Energy can be a used as a piece of Land for agriculture.

Without considering the limitations, the benefits of this type of agriculture are as below:
1. Independent of climate change.
2. No need to worry about water required for irrigation.
3. We can escape out of Natural calamities.

Jul 21 2012:
Maybe you can develop your prototype of food on the ocean in a slightly different way. Plankton requires nutrients from the bottom of the sea and fish needs oxygen from the top. We need fresh water. An ocean wave powered desalinization unit can pump water from the bottom of the ocean, produce drinking water and salt by water condensation and at the same increase the amount of fish for human comsumption. Thank you for sharing your creativity with us.

On 3. Yes, of course. Dont know why i imagined it floating in the middle of nowhere, when it only need s to be a few kilometers off coast. DOH ;-)

I like your low-tech approach with bottles. Another thought - grow algae. The nutritional value is great, the yield enormous, and - dependent of algae type - it produces oil to make plasticbottles, tubes and whatnot :)

So..
1. At least a small automated algae/oil/plastic producing unit.
2. a system of interlocking the bottles.
3. a autonomous reliable robot to build the infrastructure from the bottles.
4. crop.
5. Solar-driven transport to land (a few km :)
6. initiative to pull it off (The hard one).

A final thought on this. Would'nt it be enough to lay out giant sheets of plastic with tubes in it, cirkulate freshwater in a closed system (with algae) and then pump the final product to shore? Even considering biodegradeable plastic and the need to change the sheets regularly, this should definately be duable..

Thanks for sharing your views.
I completely agree with you with point on "self sustainable". The Floating piece of land must have its own energy.

I would like to add few points here.
1. Food production: I agree that the developed nation produces around 1.5 time the amount of consumption. But this is not the case of Developing or Under developed nations. Though Food grains are imported, it is not feeding the entire population. The prices have grown up. There are paces were still drinking water is available in scarce. After 8 years, the feeding the population will be a huge task. Urbanization has led to conversion of cultivable land into industries.
2. I go with you. We have do not require such huge amount water. But my figures stay true when we calculate the amount of water wasted out.
3. Transportation: This is a very important thing that needs to stay in our mind. When solar power can make a flight touch the cloud, Why can't Hybrid power (solar + Wind) can make this piece of land manage it? We are moving deep into the ocean. We will place it in 4-5 Km from the shore just to keep it away from waves. I am not about this practically.
4. Irrigation: Floating in ocean We have plenty of water. Reverse osmosis can help us to get the required amount of water with ease.
5. Yes, there are Hi Tech plans & Designs to make a floating city. But, We are not making this so heavy model. Huge loads of Plastic bottles wrapped can make this land mass stay afloat.

I'ill play ;) I Love the idea, but i wonder if the premise is a bit skewed?

1. It seems that we already produce 1.5 times the amount of food we need to feed everybody.
2. You don't need 4-5000 liters pr.Kg. Systems like hydroponics and better yet aquaponics takes care of that, and makes better and more automated yield.
3. How about transporting the food to land? At least in theory, things should be produced as locally as possible.

Now, if you throw in a city on your island THEN we are talking uber niceness :) There are designs for such a type of city out there, but they seem to be to very high tech (visually and constructionwise) to start out with. If you design it at a level where non-specialist can build and maintain this thing, and you use cheap (not too cheap ;) materials then the niceness rises. Something in the style of 'the global village construction kit' - just for floating city's.
You should also expect that everything should be self-sustainable.

Jul 14 2012:
The water required grow the crops would either have to be boiled then condensed sea water as the salt would probably kill the crops due to osmosis. And then there's the carbon foot print left from shipping the goods to and from said island and then in construction of the island itself, but in the long term if it turned out to be sustainable then why not try it.